If your application isn't working—or you're just looking for more information—these 20 commands will come in handy.

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In a world bursting with new tools and diverse development environments, it's practically a necessity for any developer or engineer to learn some basic sysadmin commands. Specific commands and packages can help developers organize, troubleshoot, and optimize their applications and—when things go wrong—provide valuable triage information to operators and sysadmins.

Whether you are a new developer or want to manage your own application, the following 20 basic sysadmin commands can help you better understand your applications. They can also help you describe problems to sysadmins troubleshooting why an application might work locally but not on a remote host. These commands apply to Linux development environments, containers, virtual machines (VMs), and bare metal.

1. curl

curl transfers a URL. Use this command to test an application's endpoint or connectivity to an upstream service endpoint. curl can be useful for determining if your application can reach another service, such as a database, or checking if your service is healthy.

The -I option shows the header information and the -s option silences the response body. Checking the endpoint of your database from your local desktop:

$ curl -I-s database:27017
HTTP/1.0200 OK

So what could be the problem? Check if your application can get to other places besides the database from the application host:

$ curl -I-s https://opensource.com
HTTP/1.1200 OK

That seems to be okay. Now try to reach the database from the application host. Your application is using the database's hostname, so try that first:

$ curl database:27017
curl: (6) Couldn't resolve host 'database'

This indicates that your application cannot resolve the database because the URL of the database is unavailable or the host (container or VM) does not have a nameserver it can use to resolve the hostname.

2. python -m json.tool / jq

After you issue curl, the output of the API call may be difficult to read. Sometimes, you want to pretty-print the JSON output to find a specific entry. Python has a built-in JSON library that can help with this. You use python -m json.tool to indent and organize the JSON. To use Python's JSON module, pipe the output of a JSON file into the python -m json.tool command.

For more advanced JSON parsing, you can install jq. jq provides some options that extract specific values from the JSON input. To pretty-print like the Python module above, simply apply jq to the output.

3. ls

ls lists files in a directory. Sysadmins and developers issue this command quite often. In the container space, this command can help determine your container image's directory and files. Besides looking up your files, ls can help you examine your permissions. In the example below, you can't run myapp because of a permissions issue. When you check the permissions using ls -l, you realize that the permissions do not have an "x" in -rw-r--r--, which are read and write only.

4. tail

tail displays the last part of a file. You usually don't need every log line to troubleshoot. Instead, you want to check what your logs say about the most recent request to your application. For example, you can use tail to check what happens in the logs when you make a request to your Apache HTTP server.

Use tail -f to follow Apache HTTP logs and see the requests as they happen.

The -f option indicates the "follow" option, which outputs the log lines as they are written to the file. The example has a background script that accesses the endpoint every few seconds and the log records the request. Instead of following the log in real time, you can also use tail to see the last 100 lines of the file with the -n option.

$ tail-n100/var/log/httpd/access_log

5. cat

cat concatenates and prints files. You might issue cat to check the contents of your dependencies file or to confirm the version of the application that you have already built locally.

6. grep

grep searches file patterns. If you are looking for a specific pattern in the output of another command, grep highlights the relevant lines. Use this command for searching log files, specific processes, and more. If you want to see if Apache Tomcat starts up, you might become overwhelmed by the number of lines. By piping that output to the grep command, you isolate the lines that indicate server startup.

7. ps

ps shows process status. Use this command to determine a running application or confirm an expected process. For example, if you want to check for a running Tomcat web server, you use ps with its options to obtain the process ID of Tomcat.

8. env

env allows you to set or print the environment variables. During troubleshooting, you may find it useful for checking if the wrong environment variable prevents your application from starting. In the example below, this command is used to check the environment variables set on your application's host.

Notice that the application is using Python3 and has environment variables to connect to a MongoDB database.

9. top

top displays and updates sorted process information. Use this tool to determine which processes are running and how much memory and CPU they consume. A common case occurs when you run an application and it dies a minute later. First, you check the application's return error, which is a memory error.

$ tail myapp.log
Traceback (most recent call last):
MemoryError

Is your application really out of memory? To confirm, use top to determine how much CPU and memory your application consumes. When issuing top, you notice a Python application using most of the CPU, with its memory usage climbing, and suspect it is your application. While it runs, you hit the "C" key to see the full command and reverse-engineer if the process is your application. It turns out to be your memory-intensive application (memeater.py). When your application has run out of memory, the system kills it with an out-of-memory (OOM) error.

By hitting the "C" key, you can see the full command that started the application.

In addition to checking your own application, you can use top to debug other processes that utilize CPU or memory.

10. netstat

netstat shows the network status. This command shows network ports in use and their incoming connections. However, netstat does not come out-of-the-box on Linux. If you need to install it, you can find it in the net-tools package. As a developer who experiments locally or pushes an application to a host, you may receive an error that a port is already allocated or an address is already in use. Using netstat with protocol, process and port options demonstrates that Apache HTTP server already uses port 80 on the below host.

Using netstat -tulpn shows that Apache already uses port 80 on this machine.

11. ip address

If ip address does not work on your host, it must be installed with the iproute2 package. ip address shows the interfaces and IP addresses of your application's host. You use ip address to verify your container or host's IP address. For example, when your container is attached to two networks, ip address can show which interface connects to which network. For a simple check, you can always use the ip address command to get the IP address of the host. The example below shows that the web tier container has an IP address of 172.17.0.2 on interface eth0.

Using ip address shows that the IP address of the eth0 interface is 172.17.0.2

12. lsof

lsof lists the open files associated with your application. On some Linux machine images, you need to install lsof with the lsof package. In Linux, almost any interaction with the system is treated like a file. As a result, if your application writes to a file or opens a network connection, lsof will reflect that interaction as a file. Similar to netstat, you can use lsof to check for listening ports. For example, if you want to check if port 80 is in use, you use lsof to check which process is using it. Below, you can see that httpd (Apache) listens on port 80. You can also use lsof to check the process ID of httpd, examining where the web server's binary resides (/usr/sbin/httpd).

Lsof shows that httpd listens on port 80. Examining httpd's process ID also shows all the files httpd needs in order to run.

The name of the open file in the list of open files helps pinpoint the origin of the process, specifically Apache.

13. df

You can use df (display free disk space) to troubleshoot disk space issues. When you run your application on a container orchestrator, you might receive an error message signaling a lack of free space on the container host. While disk space should be managed and optimized by a sysadmin, you can use df to figure out the existing space in a directory and confirm if you are indeed out of space.

Df shows the disk space for each filesystem, its absolute space, and availability.

The -h option prints out the information in human-readable format. The example above shows plenty of disk space on this host.

14. du

To retrieve more detailed information about which files use the disk space in a directory, you can use the du command. If you wanted to find out which log takes up the most space in the /var/log directory, for example, you can use du with the -h (human-readable) option and the -s option for the total size.

The example above reveals the largest directory under /var/log to be /var/log/audit. You can use du in conjunction with df to determine what utilizes the disk space on your application's host.

15. id

To check the user running the application, use the id command to return the user identity. The example below uses Vagrant to test the application and isolate its development environment. After you log into the Vagrant box, if you try to install Apache HTTP Server (a dependency) the system states that you cannot perform the command as root. To check your user and group, issue the id command and notice that you are running as the "vagrant" user in the "vagrant" group.

To correct this, you must run the command as a superuser, which provides elevated privileges.

16. chmod

When you run your application binary for the first time on your host, you may receive the error message "permission denied." As seen in the example for ls, you can check the permissions of your application binary.

$ ls-l
total 4
-rw-rw-r--. 1 vagrant vagrant 34 Jul 11 02:17 test.sh

This shows that you don't have execution rights (no "x") to run the binary. chmod can correct the permissions to enable your user to run the binary.

As demonstrated in the example, this updates the permissions with execution rights. Now when you try to execute your binary, the application doesn't throw a permission-denied error. Chmod may be useful when you load a binary into a container as well. It ensures that your container has the correct permissions to execute your binary.

17. dig / nslookup

A domain name server (DNS) helps resolve a URL to a set of application servers. However, you may find that a URL does not resolve, which causes a connectivity issue for your application. For example, say you attempt to access your database at the mydatabase URL from your application's host. Instead, you receive a "cannot resolve" error. To troubleshoot, you try using dig (DNS lookup utility) or nslookup (query Internet name servers) to figure out why the application can't seem to resolve the database.

$ nslookup mydatabase
Server: 10.0.2.3
Address: 10.0.2.3#53

** server can't find mydatabase: NXDOMAIN

Using nslookup shows that mydatabase can't be resolved. Trying to resolve with dig yields the same result.

These errors could be caused by many different issues. If you can't debug the root cause, reach out to your sysadmin for more investigation. For local testing, this issue may indicate that your host's nameservers aren't configured appropriately. To use these commands, you will need to install the BIND Utilities package.

18. iptables

iptables blocks or allows traffic on a Linux host, similar to a network firewall. This tool may prevent certain applications from receiving or transmitting requests. More specifically, if your application has difficulty reaching another endpoint, iptables may be denying traffic to the endpoint. For example, imagine your application's host cannot reach Opensource.com. You use curl to test the connection.

The first three rules show that traffic drops by default. The remaining rules allow SSH and DNS traffic. In this case, follow up with your sysadmin if you require a rule to allow traffic to external endpoints. If this is a host you use for local development or testing, you can use the iptables command to allow the correct traffic. Use caution when adding rules that allow traffic to your host.

19. sestatus

You usually find SELinux (a Linux security module) enforced on an application host managed by an enterprise. SELinux provides least-privilege access to processes running on the host, preventing potentially malicious processes from accessing important files on the system. In some situations, an application needs to access a specific file but may throw an error. To check if SELinux blocks the application, use tail and grep to look for a "denied" message in the /var/log/audit logging. Otherwise, you can check to see if the box has SELinux enabled by using sestatus.

The output above indicates that the application's host has SELinux enabled. On your local development environment, you can update SELinux to be more permissive. If you need help with a remote host, your sysadmin can help you determine the best practice for allowing your application to access the file it needs.

20. history

When you issue so many commands for testing and debugging, you may forget the useful ones! Every shell has a variant of the history command. It shows the history of commands you have issued since the start of the session. You can use history to log which commands you used to troubleshoot your application. For example, when you issue history over the course of this article, it shows the various commands you experimented with and learned.

$ history1clear2df-h3du

What if you want to execute a command in your previous history, but you don't want to retype it? Use ! before the command number to re-execute.

Adding ! before the command number you want to execute issues the command again.

Basic commands can enhance your troubleshooting expertise when determining why your application works in one development environment but perhaps not in another. Many sysadmins leverage these commands to debug problems with systems. Understanding some of these useful troubleshooting commands can help you communicate with sysadmins and resolve issues with your application.

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About the author

Rosemary Wang - As a developer, engineer, and enthusiast of cloud computing and infrastructure automation, Rosemary Wang bridges the technical and cultural barrier between infrastructure engineers and application developers. Whether it be helping an infrastructure engineer learn to code or an application developer troubleshoot infrastructure failures, she has fascination for solving intractable problems with code. She interfaces with vendors, clients, startups, and open source projects to find creative...

Great article. One `tail` trick that comes in really handy for me is to use `-F`. This follows log files as they get rotated and waits for the file to exist if it doesn't. This makes it really useful for watching daemon logs.

Thanks for pointing that out! It seems that the formatting cut out the difference out. The first command is issued from a local desktop while the second is issued from within the application's VM. The clarification was added to the text.

I would add awk to the list. I couldn't live without it. It's much more powerful than most of the basic commands such as grep, if you take the time to learn it as a programming language. In this day and age of heavier languages such as Perl, Python and Ruby, most folks have forgotten how small, fast and powerful awk is. And as a bonus, you will find some version of awk on just about every Unix/Linux variant, including minimal and hardened installs. Perhaps awk deserves another dedicated article. And not just one liners. :-)

Furthermore, every "sysadmin" should know the native package managers such as rpm (yum/zypper) and dpkg (apt). Once they enlighten themselves with those tools, installing software directly from Github or using "configure/make/make install" to blather software all over a system with no governance will seem like a joke. And better yet, making packages graduates you to the next level and impresses your colleagues. :-)

Nice list, Rosemary. Commands like 'cat', 'tail', 'ls' are so basic they probably belong under the category of commands that any "Linux user" should know.
Commands that every sysadmin (even beginners) should know: find, awk, traceroute, tar. There are others but these come to mind right away. Very useful article, nonetheless.

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